This is just too much for words. Waiting for word of temper tantrums or tweet storms.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

De Blasio says NYC 'looking to recoup' money from Trump after tax story

New York mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday said the city is "looking to recoup" money from President Trump after a bombshell New York Times investigation revealed the president and his family used shady financial maneuvers to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes.

De Blasio, who who often spars with the president, on Monday warned that Trump could face civil penalties over the instances of fraud outlined in the Times report, according to Bloomberg News.

"It’s clear to me that there are real ramifications right now to what has been disclosed, either potential violations of law, or in cases where the statute of limitations has ended that there may be very serious civil penalties that can be applied by both the state and the city,” de Blasio said.

“The city of New York is looking to recoup any money that Donald Trump owes the people of New York City, period," he added, according to the news outlet. ...

Though the statute of limitations has passed for many of the alleged schemes by Trump and his family, there is no time limit on civil penalties for tax fraud, the Times noted.

Ag.ny.gov: Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York; People against Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric F. Trump, Trump Foundation; MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN OPPOSITION TO RESPONDENTS' MOTION TO DISMISS AND IN FURTHER SUPPORT OF THE VERIFIED PETITION; October 4 2018

New York attorney general says Trump caused his Trump Foundation charity to break the law as she seeks to ban president from non-profits for a decade

New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood in a new court filing Thursday said that President Donald Trump caused his charitable foundation to break state and federal laws governing non-profit groups.

Underwood said Trump's actions in that regard, and his use of the Trump Foundation "for his own personal benefit," justified her request to ban him for 10 years from being involved in any non-profit group.

"Donald J. Trump used his control over the Donald J. Trump Foundation for his personal, business and political interests in violation of federal and state law governing charities," Underwood said in the filing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The filing was a memorandum opposing Trump's effort to dismiss a lawsuit Underwood filed in June against the president, his three adult children and the foundation, claiming "a pattern of persistent illegal conduct" for more than a decade.

Adding:

Associated Press: NY AG in New Lawsuit: Trump Foundation Was Turned into a Wing of the Campaign

Russian Official Linked to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Trump Tower Lawyer, Is Dead ...

Media reports in Russia say he died Wednesday night when his helicopter crashed into a forest during an unauthorized flight in the Kostroma region, northeast of Moscow. ...

Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya also worked together on another job linked to Magnitsky. The U.S. authorities brought a civil case against a company called Prevezon for its alleged links to laundering proceeds of the fraud that Magnitsky uncovered.

In April, emails obtained by Dossier, an anti-Putin campaign set up by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and published by The New York Times, showed that Veselnitskaya had helped to draft a document on behalf of the Russian government that explained why Moscow would not help with the fraud case against Prevezon.

Rather than engage with the allegations against Prevezon, much of the document was a personal attack on Browder. The cover letter that accompanied the document was signed by Karapetyan.

The refusal to help provide documents from inside Russia—orchestrated by Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya—likely contributed to the authorities’ ultimate decision to settle the case. Prevezon agreed to pay $5.9 million, but it did not admit any role in laundering the proceeds of the fraud.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

New York attorney general says Trump caused his Trump Foundation charity to break the law as she seeks to ban president from non-profits for a decade.

Banning Trump from organizations that don't make a profit would take away most of his business!

Ah, ok, that's banning him from not-for-profit organizations. Definitely a good plan! I doubt that Trump has ever made a sincere charitable donation in his life, not without planning to get some personal gain or advantage out of it.

If Trump is as leveraged as we know he is, there could be precious little liquid there if they start trying to liquidise him.

Is he, though? Apart from Deutsche Bank (who must take some sort of prize for sleaziest global financial entity since the Bank of Credit and Commerce International went under), my understanding is that no one lends to him. He bilked so many creditors back in the '80s and '90s that his financing dried up. A few articles this week have made a compelling case that his move to all-cash in the 2000s was because he was spending his share of his father's estate, but there's also the possibility of laundered cash from wherever. That's leverage of a sort, but not the kind that finance people are usually thinking of.

It's a puzzle. Yes, he was known as a lord of debt driven business twenty and thirty years ago, but now? I'm not sure. So much of his income comes from things like licensing agreements that are not assets. He's way underwater on a bunch of his golf properties in the UK and Ireland, if memory serves, but the State of New York can hardly force him to divest from those.

I don't want a forced liquidation. I want his finances to be out in the sunlight ASAP.

"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple; the smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton

Here’s How A Major Western Bank Enabled A Suspected Russian Money Launderer

Documents show TD Bank loaned $3 million to a company connected to Russian tax fraud and later linked to the special counsel’s investigation. ...

In September 2013, then-US attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil forfeiture case against Prevezon and accused it of being linked to “a Russian criminal enterprise” that “sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.” The suit targeted a common money laundering tactic: funneling illicit funds into real estate to avoid the scrutiny of banks.

That case briefly mentioned a loan by TD Bank and listed the Manhattan property purchased by Prevezon Alexander, but did not include any information about the bank’s internal dealings. Just days before the civil case was set for trial in May 2017, Prevezon settled with the government for $5.9 million and did not acknowledge wrongdoing. Bharara did not return a message seeking comment.

Prevezon would have barely registered in the public’s consciousness if not for a 2016 meeting that has become one of the most closely scrutinized events in the presidential campaign. That June, Prevezon’s attorney and a consultant for the company met at Trump Tower with top campaign officials to share “dirt” on Hillary Clinton that supposedly was part of the Kremlin’s support for Trump.

But it’s now well known that the attorney ultimately lobbied the Trump camp — including Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, and campaign chair Paul Manafort — to overturn a law intended to punish human rights violators and restrict international money laundering. That law, called the Magnitsky Act, had enraged President Vladimir Putin and was deeply problematic for dozens of wealthy Russians and companies — including Prevezon.

As banks across the world draw scrutiny for allowing billions of laundered dollars to flow through their accounts from Russia, this untold chapter of Prevezon’s history reveals just how easy it was for Russian individuals to funnel money into the US through shady real estate deals, and how little one major Western bank did to stop it.

FBI looking at Manhattan district attorney's office over potential undue influence in handling of cases: sources

FBI agents are probing the Manhattan district attorney’s office over its handling of high-profile cases that were dropped once lawyers for the well-connected subjects made donations, the Daily News has learned.

Investigators have been quietly seeking information in recent months about decision-making by DA Cy Vance Jr. and his staff, sources with knowledge of the undertaking said.

The queries are centered on how things are handled in the office and who the major players are, the sources said. The FBI interest grew out of revelations that investigations were closed once lawyers representing the bigwig suspects made hefty donations to Vance’s campaign coffers, sources said.

The team has asked about current and former high-level staff members and their relationships to private law firms and outside agencies, sources said. Investigators are considering whether undue influence was at play. ...

In another case, the DA also failed to bring criminal charges against two of President Trump’s children in an alleged real estate scam.

Vance’s office cleared daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr., who were being looked at for allegedly defrauding Trump SoHo investors and would-be buyers by lying about the number of condos that had been sold.

In 2012, Vance met with an attorney for the pair, Marc Kasowitz, who had previously given him $25,000. An additional $32,000 was donated after the office declined to prosecute Ivanka and Trump Jr.

A sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side has been frozen as part of a hard-core battle between the US government and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, The Post has learned.

US officials say Deripaska, an aluminum billionaire, is close both with Russian mob leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that he is on the sanctions list because he is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering.

Deripaska also had President Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort — who has been convicted of crimes including money-laundering and who is cooperating with US special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe — on his payroll for years. ...

One of Zhukova’s good friends is Ivanka Trump. The two are so close that Zhukova and Abramovich often traveled and socialized with Trump and her husband, presidential son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner, all over the world — from jet-setting hot spots in Russia and Croatia to Aspen and New York. ...

FBI agents tried unsuccessfully to flip Deripaska in exchange for information on Russian organized crime — and Russia’s aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, the New York Times reported last month.

Adding:

The Guardian: Revealed: Russian billionaire set up US company before Trump Tower meeting

A senior official working for the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) has been charged with leaking confidential financial reports on former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and others to a media outlet.

Prosecutors say that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards photographed what are called suspicious activity reports, or SARS, and other sensitive government files and sent them to an unnamed reporter, in violation of U.S. law.

Banks file SARs confidentially in order to tip off law enforcement to potentially illegal financial transactions. The unauthorized document disclosures, which began last October, are said to have provided the basis for 12 news articles published by an unnamed news organization.

Edwards is being charged in the Southern District of New York with one count of unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports and one count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports, both of which carry a maximum five years in prison.

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Trump Organization accuses New York State Attorney General’s office of being “unfairly biased” in its case against the Trump Foundation. https://abcn.ws/2CSHBRs

In a motion filed earlier this week urging the judge to dismiss the case, attorneys for President Trump’s company, which is connected to the charitable foundation, argued that former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was investigating the foundation while soliciting campaign contributions on the promise to oppose Trump and his agenda.

Schneiderman led the investigation until his resignation in May following the publication of domestic abuse allegations against him in The New Yorker. He was replaced by acting Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who filed the lawsuit in June.

The lawsuit alleges that President Trump and his three eldest children, who served as members of the charity’s board, repeatedly used charitable donations to pay off other financial obligations. The lawsuit seeks to dissolve the foundation and to bar Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump from serving on other charity boards in the future.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Trump Organization accuses New York State Attorney General’s office of being “unfairly biased” in its case against the Trump Foundation. https://abcn.ws/2CSHBRs

In a motion filed earlier this week urging the judge to dismiss the case, attorneys for President Trump’s company, which is connected to the charitable foundation, argued that former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was investigating the foundation while soliciting campaign contributions on the promise to oppose Trump and his agenda.

Schneiderman led the investigation until his resignation in May following the publication of domestic abuse allegations against him in The New Yorker. He was replaced by acting Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who filed the lawsuit in June.

The lawsuit alleges that President Trump and his three eldest children, who served as members of the charity’s board, repeatedly used charitable donations to pay off other financial obligations. The lawsuit seeks to dissolve the foundation and to bar Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump from serving on other charity boards in the future.

Hmmm - only suspecting the former AG of bias, but not the Acting AG who took over and thinks there is no bias as to the facts?

A new lawsuit accuses President Trump, his company and three of his children of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the lawsuit comes just days before the midterm elections, raising questions about whether its timing is politically motivated. It is being underwritten by a nonprofit whose chairman has been a donor to Democratic candidates.

The allegations take aim at the heart of Mr. Trump’s personal narrative that he is a successful deal-maker who built a durable business, charging he and his family lent their name to a series of scams.

The 160-page complaint alleges that Mr. Trump and his family received secret payments from three business entities in exchange for promoting them as legitimate opportunities, when in reality they were get-rich-quick schemes that harmed investors, many of whom were unsophisticated and struggling financially.

Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Mr. Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products; the Trump Network, a vitamin marketing enterprise; and the Trump Institute, which the suit said offered “extravagantly priced multiday training seminars” on Mr. Trump’s real estate “secrets.”

The four plaintiffs, who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe, depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants.

NEW YORK (AP) — The special prosecutor appointed to investigate allegations that former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman physically abused women said Thursday that she has closed the case without bringing criminal charges.

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced her decision in a brief statement. She said investigators did an “exhaustive review” and she personally interviewed each woman who had accused Schneiderman of assault. Investigators also spoke with members of Schneiderman’s security detail.

She concluded that statutes of limitations and other “legal impediments” made it impossible to charge Schneiderman. The probe found no misconduct by Schneiderman’s staff in the attorney general’s office, she said.

Schneiderman said he didn’t consider the decision an exoneration.

“I recognize that District Attorney Singas’ decision not to prosecute does not mean I have done nothing wrong,” he said through a publicist. “I accept full responsibility for my conduct in my relationships with my accusers, and for the impact it had on them.

“After spending time in a rehab facility, I am committed to a lifelong path of recovery and making amends to those I have harmed. I apologize for any and all pain that I have caused, and I apologize to the people of the State of New York for disappointing them after they put their trust in me.”